#i read some of these to my friends and they pointed out how aggressively american some of these were LOL

[bbyobbyo]

seventeen as dads headcanons

content: reader is married to svt, normative(?) family structure, literally just unhinged thoughts, not proofread lol

note: was trying to write an actual fic but then got distracted sorry, dadventeen brainrot is so real

Seungcheol

Super protective “don’t touch my family” dad outwardly

All of his kids’ friends are straight up SCARED of him

But within the household he's the one sneaking ice cream when you say no, albeit guiltily

Shopping trips with him will always result in buying something for them and he is very willing to be taken advantage of

“Babe if I can’t spoil them now, they’re gonna grow up and move out before we know it!”

Tries his best to be handy around the house, but probably makes it worse, ends up calling Mingyu to come fix it

Jeonghan

DEFINITELY a “go ask your mom” dad

This man not only powerless, he doesn't even want the power, he's just here to have a good time and if you say they can't, then sorry kiddo

You can’t tell me that he doesn’t bring up becoming a family prank channel at least once a week

LOVES bragging to everyone else about his kid’s achievements, cannot shut up about them to anyone in a 5 foot radius tbh

His kids definitely talk to him about everything, which is great because he is SO nosy.

Has a list of all their best friends, enemies, and crushes at school somewhere on his notes app for future reference when they come to him for advice

Joshua

The REAL practical joke dad, admittedly made them cry a few times when they were younger and felt really bad about it

Perfect sweet husband and father in image, all of his kids know he’s actually lame af

Dominates the summer barbeques, UNDISPUTED GRILLMASTER

Super dependable, will drop everything if his family needs him and never goes back on his word

Gives surprisingly good fashion advice

Jun

Definitely walks around the neighborhood with his baby in a sling carrier strapped to his front, POINTS AT EVERYTHING OF INTEREST

When they start learning how to speak he adopts all his baby’s weird mannerisms (it started off as a cute joke but then realized he couldn’t stop)

Cries at every baby milestone until they’re like 10

Will not stop bringing up embarrassing childhood moments, especially in front of their kids’ friends/significant others

Cuts fruit for them instead of apologizing

Hoshi

Will fully ally himself with his kids

Like legit would do anything for them. ANYTHING.

I’m talking borderline go to his kid's school to beat up their hypothetical bullies himself sort of dad

The kids can always count on him to say yes if you say no

Absolutely DEVASTATED when they grow out of the tiger stuff he buys for them and become angsty teens

“What do you mean tigers aren’t cool? Do you not love your old man anymore?”

Wonwoo

Quiet doting dad

Definitely more affectionate when the kids are younger but gets into the awkward advice-giving stage when they grow up

LAME DAD JOKES GALORE, groaning is a regular activity in this household

Tries to google basic algebra every time his kids ask for help on math homework because he doesn’t want to admit he forgot everything

Chaotic af unsupervised. “Guess we’re having pizza again tonight kiddos” kinda dad because he cannot and should not cook

Jihoon

Another quiet dad, but make it savage

I feel like he would just love roasting his kids (affectionately of course)

And always overwhelmingly acts of service so his kids know they are loved

Allowance randomly appearing under their pillow, their favorite foods magically stocked in the fridge, always relenting to one last bedtime story no matter how tired he is

Would let you have final say but he makes it really clear he’s on their side and empathizes with them but its out of his hands

“Next time just don’t get caught, okay?” *winks*

Minghao

Loves loves loves just spending time with his babies

Doesn’t matter what he’s doing he just wants to be in the same room as them or cuddling and holding them

Emphasizes equality in your relationship so his kids can grow up with those values and learn to respect others

TURNS EVERYTHING INTO A LIFE LESSON OH MY GOD

Doesn’t believe in allowances but will cave and literally buy them anything they want if they ask

Would rather die than miss any important event (competition, speech, recital, talent show, graduation, etc.)

Mingyu

Absolute super dad, what can’t he do? Nonstop home improvement projects, cooks anything his kids are craving, offers to drive everyone everywhere

But also the whiniest dad ever lol constantly complains about people “ruining his system”

Absolutely FUCKS at the school bake sales, earns them twice the target fundraiser amounts because he's dilf material and knows how to get the moms to spill their pockets

Likes to have the final say, but you’re both usually on the same page in regards to discipline so his kids aren’t getting away with anything

Just the most supportive dad in the universe, the kids learn to never take him for granted

Seokmin

You already know his kids are gonna be spoiled rotten. He will be the favorite parent by default sorry I don't make the rules!!

His arms are the very definition of a safe space

Leaves all the discipline to you because he cannot keep a straight face when delivering a lecture (one time he made them cry and also ended up crying because he felt so bad)

Does so much embarrassing shit just to cheer his kids up when they have a bad day, acts surprised when they tell him he's cringe

Such a pushover that they are probably gonna make fun of him when they're older, but that's okay because they know there's no universe in which their dad will stop loving them

Seungkwan

As long as he can pick them up still, his kids are never on the ground for too long

Two words: SPORTS. DAD.

He could practically captain the cheerleading teams at their school with how many events he's been to

Knows all of his kids’ friends parents, they all get together and have coffee once a month actually

Nags nonstop and complains about everything he has to do for them, but is always diligent and does it without question

Gets so pouty when they start getting embarrassed to show affection, he WILL get his cheek kisses if it's the last thing he does!!

Vernon

Chillest dad in existence?!?

Literally as long as his kids are safe he doesn't give a single fuuuuckkk

“Sleepover? Yeah, call me when you're done and I'll pick you up.”

He WILL argue with you if he doesn't think there's a good reason to say no to them

So cute and encouraging to all their weird hobbies and phases throughout the years. “Lemme see” and “Really? Show me” are regular phrases in his vocabulary

His kids are definitely gonna inherit his legendary facial expressions afnngjdg

Chan

Super affectionate and doting, but also quite strict with them at times

“I just want the best for you, I want to see you succeed”

HAS A PHOTO OF THEM READY AT ANY TIME, lockscreen is a different shot of his kids every day and is eager to show it off even if no one asked

Not so subtly signs his kid up for dance lessons

Just the most encouraging dad ever, makes sure that they know making mistakes are a part of life and that he will always love them no matter what

[doberbutts]

i hope this isnt weird to say but i really appreciate your dobeposting, especially about the history & current disposition of the breed. my mom has had dobermans my whole life and it led me to kinda... really dislike them for years, her last three and current youngster all were/are so nervy and quick to bite unprovoked (thankfully the young girl is coming around pretty nicely, no actual aggressive bites, just still learning to take things gently)

anyway, getting to the point, reading you explain about the breed's history, who dobermann actually was & how they were created & what they were originally bred for, and the way unfortunately the temperament has gotten messy due to that mixing of people wanting dobes to be family pet dogs and one-person protection dogs at the same time, or just try to make them into a pet dog they just aren't cut out to be (my mom is very much one of the former lol) really helped me understand and appreciate the breed. my dad has american akitas, and imho they have a similar issue of people trying to breed them for social, cheery pet temperaments which just tends to go very badly for a very large, high aggression, high prey drive, not suited for the average suburbanite breed like them, and realizing dobermans basically have a kind of more severe extent of the same issue (albeit I'm oversimplifying here) really helped me understand them.

i dont think I'd ever choose to have one, but I've definitely got a lot more respect and appreciation from afar.

so, sorry for rambling and probably being repetitive, hope i made some kind of sense, just wanted to say thank you for being a great breed advocate :)

here's a dobe tax, my mom's ~18 month old little girl, kira. she looks like that because, from what the rescue told my mom, she was from a backyard breeder and had to be removed from her first two homes due to mistreatment. still manages to be a real sweetie most of the time

Hey thanks for the compliment and the dog tax!

It really sucks because I think dobermans can be fantastic pet dogs... to people who want a doberman and all that entails. But a lot of people in the outcross groups I'm griping about want something more like a gun dog or a retriever in a doberman costume, and it's very frustrating to explain again and again that that simply is not what a doberman is.

I'd be all for a doberman outcross that actually respects what a doberman is for! The problem is that there have been very few of those, and most of them started with junk and ended up fairly lackluster in what they produced because you can't shine a turd and call it gold.

Dobermans don't have to be nervy, loose cannon, fear aggressive, bite risk demons. My doberman is not! My doberman before him was scared, but that was largely a socialization problem caused by living 2 years of her life exclusively in a box, and she wasn't dangerous, she just shut down and shivered. My doberman before her wasn't like this. And my doberman before him was, but again with the known abuse in his background from being a court case dog it's likely that he didn't start out that way and didn't need to become that.

It is possible to have a doberman that is actually a really fun dog to have and be around. You just. Have to understand that they are a doberman. My best friend @khayr has a doberman that's a pet, that does not do any sort of protection work. Her dog is very safe to be around! She's a lovely creature and I think well matched to my buddy's needs. But! She's also a doberman! That means she doesn't like the mailman or the UPS drivers! It means when missionaries knock on her door, her dog throws a fit! It means when she's out late at night and someone rapidly approaches her, her dog puts herself between her and the oncoming stranger! Because she's a doberman! She's supposed to do that!

[bettsfic]

i can't stay quiet about this anymore. for weeks now i've thought, noo i won't write about knights of the zodiac on my blog. nobody cares. BUT it is the weirdest fucking movie i've ever seen and i need to tell you about it.

knights of the zodiac is an american made live action adaptation of the anime/manga saint seiya. before this film, i'd never even heard of it, but that doesn't matter, because i watched an interview with mackenyu (who plays seiya) who said that the director told him not to bother watching the anime or reading the manga, because he wanted this movie to be its own thing. you know, which is always a great way to bring in your core audience.

with that said, i'm viewing this film entirely on its own merit, with no context of the source material. so saint seiya fans may not want to read this.

the movie came out this past may. i was excited about it for no other reason than mackenyu starring in an american action movie. i'm honestly a little surprised people weren't more jazzed about that. there aren't a lot of japanese actors starring in big budget american action movies.

other cast members include sean bean (who, spoiler alert, dies), famke janssen, and mark dacascos. in case you don't recognize those names, they are, respectively, boromir/ned stark, jean grey from x-men, and the iron chef. if nothing else, i think it's worth watching for the utterly bizarre casting.

the premise, sort of: mackenyu, who appears to be contractually obligated to play angsty younger brother characters (i think this is the 7th thing i've seen him in where he is an angsty younger brother), has an older sister who is missing. he's a poor orphan boy who gets by on winning cage fights. or something. so boromir finds him and tells him he's destined to be athena's bodyguard, and he gets on board with this alarmingly fast, but not after antagonizing athena (who is not yet athena) and throwing out some snarky one-liners. he trains in the middle of nowhere with a masked lady who repeatedly kicks his ass, and he never changes clothes the entire time. there's other stuff too but it's secondary to the absolute batshittery of this movie.

i saw it on premiere night, which was also the premiere night of the new guardians of the galaxy movie. again, A+ move by the promotional team. so there i was on a saturday at 7pm. prime movie going time. and my best friend and i were the only ones in the theater.

although i had no real expectations for this movie beyond Mackenyu Hits Things And Is Sad, i believed one of two things would happen: it would be as terrible as it sounded, or it would actually be phenomenal. but no, it was neither bad, nor good, but a secret third thing: it scratched a deep and rabid part of my id.

and by that i mean, it appeared to be a very high budget love letter to glaringly submissive men.

here's my letterboxd review that i wrote in the brief hypomanic episode succeeding my initial viewing:

okay so first and most importantly, this scene made me actually scream:

it's a joke line, sure, but 1) he definitely means it, and 2) he immediately calls her "princess," which if you've ever read my fic, you'll know that that's a one-hit KO for me.

(putting this under a cut because it's already long)

you see how athena is framed above seiya? that is one of approximately 1000 shots where this occurs. to every male character. at one point, mackenyu perches gingerly on the back of athena's motorcycle. in fact the only male character who attempts to be dominant aggressive and toxically masculine becomes the punching bag of the film.

in the beginning, seiya is in a cage match where people are getting angry at him for "dancing," which means he doesn't fight so much as avoids getting hit and looks pretty doing it. a solid third of the movie involves a very large lady beating the crap out of him. the premise of the film is getting him to devote his entire life to a goddess and obey protect her at all costs.

i'm probably the only one who watched this movie and was like, hmm is this kink coded? am i insane for seeing this? usually when i think of kink coding i think of quentin tarantino's foot fetish, these long gaudy shots of women's feet hanging out of car windows. it's in the imagery and shot composition and power dynamics.

here, the imagery is a lot of kneeling men, the shot compositions repeatedly place the men lower than the women, and the power dynamics are simply that the women have all the power, and the men have a little, as a treat. jean grey is a straight-up femdom, leather and all.

by the end of the climax, seiya is naked, having been stripped of his (magical and very powerful) armor as pre-athena becomes athena and uh, blasts his clothes off in the process. there's probably something to be said there about, you know, literally stripping him of his power.

i think what i find particularly remarkable about this is that the repeated feminization of the male lead is treated as a good thing. a self-actualizing thing. it's the process through which he accepts himself and his destiny. that's the reason i say it's a love letter--i've known a lot of submissive men and many of them really struggle to accept that part of themselves. i had a friend once who was so ashamed of himself--not just that he was submissive, but that submission was an integral part of his identity--that he had a breakdown in my car over it. so i think it's nice seeing a vaguely positive portrayal of finding oneself through (textually) devotion and (subtextually) submission.

god help me, seiya spends the entire film being irritating and bratty. this movie is my personal kryptonite.

don't get me wrong, it's a terrible movie. the writing is awful, the direction is awful, and if it gets a second film, i'll be shocked. it received a 1.9 (out of 5) on letterboxd and a 4.4 (out of 10) on imdb.

but i've also always been a lover of the star wars prequels (and oh boy there's a lot to be said there about submissive men) and so my patience for bad writing is infinite in the face of interesting things happening on a character level. in a world of disneyfied stock plots and bloated marvel franchises, i appreciate when a movie tries to do something different, even if it doesn't do it very well.

anyway, i can't in good conscience recommend it, but i for one plan to watch it at least a hundred more times.

[shrimpmandan]

I think at this point anyone who calls themselves a proshipper but is like, staunchly aggressively no-matter-what anti-RPF is either deluding themselves or thinks that the concept of "real people being reimagined as fictional characters" hasn't existed for decades at this point.

Everyone was fucking raving about Hamilton and Clone High barely a few years ago. A lot of extremely famous, influential movies are based off of real people, such as The Wolf of Wall Street. Every single fucking cartoon you've seen that references a real life historical figure like Cleopatra or Napoleon is technically doing RPF to some degree. THE MAGIC FUCKING TREEHOUSE IS RPF.

All this is ignoring how much we WORSHIP AO3, but-- but but, the founder of AO3 very much supports RPF. And by supports I mean they actively WRITE RPF. Tons of American Idol stuff that's all obscenely popular!

Now of course, there's gonna be some people who have a kneejerk rebuttal about how it's "different" with historical figures, that it doesn't matter because they're all dead, or that movies and books are different from fanfiction that may or may not be sexual. Except all of those arguments make absolutely zero sense when you think about them for more than two seconds.

Shouldn't the subjects being dead make it... more disrespectful, on a base level? You could made a valid case that with historical figures, nobody is left alive to mourn them. In comparison, people who have died relatively recently still have loved ones alive to mourn their deaths, and who would very likely be negatively mentally impacted by stumbling across an RPF fic. Understandably so--

but wasn't our whole argument that other people's feelings are their own to deal with, and not our responsibility?

You can make a similar case for serial killers, too. The victims of Jeffrey Dahmer still have friends and family that are alive. I would imagine they wouldn't want to see posts sexualizing or glorifying him-- but I doubt they're seeking out anything related to him /at all/, frankly. And then we're back to point one about how all that matters is that shit is consistently tagged and that people simply don't read what they don't like.

In my opinion, the sole, sound argument against RPF would be sexual RPF of minors. Even if no contact or even grooming is happening: that is still sexual content of a living minor. That is CSEM. That is a completely valid thing to be against. I honestly fail to see why sexual drawings of real minors are illegal, but not writings. Still, writings and drawings do not involve the same amount of /direct/ abuse as 'regular' CSEM and CSA, but making the argument of psychological harm is fair, especially when this is a case of a child being directly sexualized against their will.

But then we're still back to square one.

Don't like don't read.

Honestly, I'm neutral on RPF. I'm against anything that involves a sexualized depiction of a real child, and I'm generally not super interested in or comfortable with reading fics about real people, but it's also not a topic I can just disassociate myself from and say that it's somehow disconnected from proshipping. It isn't. Proship communities are built off of the backs of RPF shippers, like it or not. And honestly, I couldn't care less so long as the shipper in question is still respectful of the privacy of the subject(s) they're writing about. The version of the person they're writing is fundamentally not real, and that's a weird thing to wrap your head around. One could even argue my own reasons for singling out child sexual RPF is hypocritical or contradictory, and I wouldn't disagree. I think having mixed feelings on the subject is understandable. But being completely, over-archingly against it due to knee-jerk discomfort? It just seems a bit silly to me.

[jeweledstone]

More vaguely Pizza Tower related bullshit with everyone’s favorite yandere twink cunt bitch god I hate him

DATE: 10/31/2023 - 11/1/2023

Oh boy, it’s that time again folks! Time for some unhinged self-insert fan fiction-esque nonsense that’d make a wattpad user shudder in fear.

So basically, more shenanigans with Pizzahead/Totino from the hit indie game Pizza Tower and his attempts to kidnap me and turn me into Peppino cause the REAL Peppino doesn’t love him back or some shit like that. For the hopelessly confused, here’s a link to the previous dream post I made regarding this particular plot point. For everyone else, click the read more for the rest of this recounting :)

So, despite my hoping he’d just give up and start stalking someone else, ya boi is still being haunted in his dreams by the cartoon pizza man. RECENTLY he’s even gone as far as BREAKING INTO MY ACTUAL HOUSE to try and abduct me (in-dream of course, not in real life lmao)

One of his more recent appearances happened in a dream I had on Halloween night that was honestly, kinda Halloween themed outta sheer coincidence.

In it, me and my family were camping (a common theme/trope in my dreams for some reason) at this national park of sorts that was famous due to this massive cave it had in it that was EXTREMELY haunted. Like, it was very common for visitors to encounter at least one ghost (or phantom as they were called in-universe) while exploring said cave. My family was stopping to visit said cave before going home when The Bastard™ showed up. I remember he had on this sorta human disguise so my parents wouldn’t recognize him (cause again, mf tried to break into my house in previous dream). He somehow convinced them to let me go in the cave alone with him, claiming we were friends or some other bullshit, and that’s when the shit show truly began.

Now, first thing you need to know about this cave, is how massive it is. At its deepest, the cave went down to about 5000 meters (16404.2 feet for my fellow Americans) below the earth. Naturally, park guests weren’t allowed to go that deep in, you could only go about 10 meters (100 if you’re over 18) before there was some kinda blockade keeping you from going further. Aside from the obvious safety protocol stuff, another reason was because the deeper you went into the cave, the more ghosts you’d encounter, and the more aggressive said ghosts would be.

Either the ghosts or the cave itself also had these strange, reality-bending properties to it that would affect guests who stayed in the cave for a prolonged period of time. One way they liked to fuck with people was by transforming them in ways that often depended on said person’s most prominent personality trait (often causing said trait to be exaggerated as the person’s mental state changed along with thier body). Said changes were reversed once the person affected left the cave.

And…

Guess what happened to my anxiety filled ass when they got a hold of me!

Yep, back at it again with THIS BULLSHIT. Idk if this happened because of PH was there or what, but yeah. Now here I am, once again tf’d into Peppino against my will, trapped in a cave with someone who’s been obsessively stalking me for months now, and one wrong move away from a full blown panic attack. Said panic ended up happening when, at a really deep point in the cave, me and PH were cornered by some really large and threatening ghosts who were definitely planning on not letting us out of that cave alive.

I kinda-sorta blacked out around this part, but from what I could figure out, it was about then that Pep kinda… “took over” and beat the shit outta the ghosts (apparently killing a few some-fucking-how) before making a break outta the cave. I remember “waking up” outside the cave, having already changed back to normal.

After that…incident… life mostly went back to normal after my family went back home, save for some supernatural entities (which were commonplace in this verse) becoming afraid of me due to the whole killing an unkillable entity thing that happened in the cave.

So that’s basically it. I haven’t really seen much of PH since then, but I know he made it outta the cave and is still out there (unfortunately). So, yeah, that’s all folks. See ya.

[myloveforhergoeson]

Uhh... I'd apologize for the wall of text I just left on your new chapter on AO3, but my mother always told me to never tell a lie. ;)

AHHHHH thank you SO MUCH i know it was so long and so much information to take in but im so so so overjoyed that you enjoyed! thank you for taking some time out of your day to write such a thought out and sweet comment 😭 literally my #1 motivator. us james girlies gotta stick together!!!!!!

i know you left the comment on ao3 but i've got a lot to say back so imma take some bits and pieces and write them out here ehehe

"I'd noticed that James seemed a bit hesitant to talk about his parents. Especially his mother. And I saw Roxy wonder if she was the type of girl you bring home to your parents. But I think for her, everything's going to become clearer at Mother's Day. It's not that James is ashamed or anything. I think it's because he loves her so much and he doesn't want his mother ruining what they have. She is a bit... domineering."

YES UGH roxy just doesn't get it bc she has such a good relationship w her dad and mentioned way way back after she broke up with dak that she thought he was hiding their relationship (which he was... but she's just speculating) so she's just a teensy bit freaked out about james potentially doing the same thing. and it's totally like you said, she just doesn't understand quite yet. from what she knows about the diamond family, she sees james' dad as the problem, not his mom. she's in for a ride lol

"But, seriously, side note for these two: OPEN UP TO EACH OTHER!"

mannn they struggle with that don't they 😭 it's so hard to write! not that i'm a perfect communicator in my own relationships but... yeah i remember being 17 and wanting to share ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about myself so...

"Kendall sure knows how to bribe her, doesn't he? And the cheeky payback with Kendall on the ice is so Kendall. I really love how you touched on Kendall being a prodigy on the ice. And of course he was the Captain. I can see it. And the nicknames too. Sir Rounded. Pretty Boy. Tensie. Sensacional. Please, please, PLEASE have the boys refer to each other by those nicknames at some point. Or even Roxy."

roxy and kendall are like brother and sister to me; of course he knows how to get what he wants from her!! especially when joe jonas is involved... but yes!! they talk big hockey game in the show but we never really get to see it; so i wanted to highlight that just a little bit. go captain go! i really don't know anything about hockey irl but i do know that nicknames are a big thing at least in the american league! did my best. if you ask my friends im equally as terrible at nicknames in real life. and don't you worry roxy is definitely calling james pretty boy at some point in the future (she already did in the rockstar au!) but i'll have to find a way to work in the others. did anyone almost catch that kendall nearly told her logan's real name? hortense... 'tensie... oh god she's going to freak lmao...

"Side note: I love how all the hockey guys are super chill. I actually like that image of them being so aggressive on the ice, but actually be teddy bears in real life. (Something that especially fits Carlos.)"

:)))))))) even though they appear for so little in this chapter the hockey boys mean so much to me. if anyone reads my monthly book reviews... well... you know i love a good hockey romance! they're all themed quite similar - the giant, violent sports machine actually has a soft side... god i'm such a sucker for it! james really isn't like that, at least not in the way his friends are, but i gotta squeeze in some self-indulgence in here and there. i named most of the guys after characters from those books! hawkins comes from nate hawkins (icebreaker by hannah grace) ((i know! you can all boo me later)) callaghan comes from russ callaghan (wildfire by hannah grace) graham comes from garett graham (the deal by elle kennedy) miller comes from rory miller (the fake out by stephanie archer) logan (not that one) comes from john logan (the mistake by elle kennedy) and streicher comes from jamie streicher (behind the net by stephanie archer) PHEW!!!! we love a cameo

"And the way Roxy got tricked by Katie was so... that was just glorious. And the way Roxy freaked out when she realized what was happening was great too. This is making me excited for Big Time Crush. Their conversation at the end was such a great touch. I'm glad Katie has that older sister figure in her life."

katie MASTERMIND strikes again... though if she just asked rox would've taken her anway!!! she was just embarrassed... it's hard for her to talk about her feelings when she's growing up with not one, but FOUR, overprotective older brothers! someone left a comment on my wattpad and said they really loved the roxy/katie interactions and i realized they had like. such little time together so i needed to fix that asap! i don't have an older sister, but i am one, so i tried to channel that energy into that scene hehe

"AH! JO SAID THE L-WORD ABOUT KENDALL! Damn. That episode is gonna be even more heartbreaking now."

>:) sorry. had to! bothered the fuck out of me they never said it in the original show soooo

"And the cat's named Hippocrates?! That is such a Logan thing, though. And I love how Logan and Roxy were able to talk to each other about their respective heartbreaks."

eheheh it took me sooo long to come up with a name for the cat, it was originally einstein but we talked about hippocrates in one of my classes the day i edited the chapter and it just felt more fitting... here is the mister in the garden himself. thanks google!

and yess lord i love writing logan and roxy so so so much. out of all of them (even james!) she's most comfortable talking with him; i accidentally made them really similar personality wise and they just get along so well

"Aw, Carlos got Roxy on an early morning run. AND HE BROUGHT A PUPPY! (Her age doesn't matter - all dogs are puppies to me.) Missy sounds so cute! And the way she led the run is so cool. And I'm with Carlos. Keep Missy away from Lightning. He's such a protective dog dad."

MISSY!!!!! you are so right all dogs are puppies and missy is no exception!!!! i read somewhere a long time ago that dalmatians are natural leaders, so i just let our girl have her moment! my dog can be like that too though; she has her favorite walking paths! as for keeping her away from lighting... i think missy can hold her own :) but yes carlos is such a protective dog dad. that's his baby!!!! and here is missy, thank you once again google

"And seriously? James needed to ask if he could kiss Roxy at midnight? Also... can I live in Roxy's dream house?"

yes!! he's a gentleman!!! they were drinking!!!!!! but rox was def thinking the same thing as you hehe. and she's sooooo funny! miss ma'am gets a few drinks in her and she just starts blabbing and blabbing (just like me fr) for anyone wondering what her biggest fantasy is... she's literally living it idk what to tell you. dream job, living in her dream city, dating the hottest guy ever who is so sweet and attentive to her, and he's FAMOUS? not that james needs to know that she thinks that :) lord knows she's going to love the introduction of one direction in the third season...

lmaooo there you go - an equally as long wall of text i am also not going to apologize for... i was bursting with all this information and just waiting for someone to ask loll. you know me. i can talk about my own silly story for hours and hours and hours-

thank you so much again for reading! i'm so excited for the next chapter of take a shot in the dark!!! and i noticed you put in a new section of your ao3 for kaelyn knight stories? are we getting short stories in the future!? ahhhh!!!!!!

[cordycepsfem]

I am with you on the need for a more prominent anti pedophilia movement withing LGB spaces.

I think there is a weird problem within the LGBT community where two different groups see issues:

-Gay men have a LONG history of being classified as deviants and pedophiles for normal pieces of life. Consider for instance the aggressive anti sodomy laws compared to extremely lax (or non existent) age of consent and child marriage laws through much of the US until recently. The concern among some (particularly gay men) is the battle cry of "kill sex offenders! Prison for life for groomers!" Is that the definitions of both of those will be legally changed to encompass normal healthy behavior. Consider also how the idea of "child molestation" to most Americans conjures an image of a man molesting a boy, even though girls are MUCH more likely to be molested.

-Creeps and creep apologists (Yaniv, Long-Chu, etc).

There are still some very worrying child marriage laws in the US (and around the world)!

I agree that gay men do face unfounded scrutiny and accusations of being deviants/pedophiles, and that should not be wielded against them. However, I don't think that when gay men see a bill against pedophiles or child abusers, many of them immediately think, "Oh no, this will somehow harm me," whereas the literal first place I saw a post about Florida's child abuse law was in a quote tweet from a trans person complaining about how this would affect the trans community.

The problem there is that there is a very large, bizarre faction of the trans community who are terminally online. They don't see how suggesting that an anti-child abuse bill is "anti-trans" makes trans people as a whole look. I read that and cringed on behalf of my trans friends, who are not terminally online individuals, and who never cross my mind when I think about TRAs online.

The additional point about creeps is that they also make the trans community look bad by association, and many of them do it by exploiting the system. Yaniv got his name changed so it was legal for him to file harassment claims against people who "misgendered" him, and spent untold amounts of Canadian taxpayer dollars suing women of color, most of them immigrants, for not wanting to touch his balls. And it was entirely legal for him to do so!

Long-Chu and "Grace" Lavery wrote books about how being thought of as a woman was a sexual thrill for them, how being a "hole" was all that it meant to be a woman, how women are blank-eyed sex puppets... Lavery even had the gall to name his book about being a woman after his penis. But because they're men-who-claim-to-be-women, we must celebrate them, write articles about them, give them money, allow them to be professors where they teach undergraduates about pornographic writing.

You've got "Erin" Reed on Twitter who screams about genocide but can't read a legislative bill for shit, and "Alejandra" Caballero from Harvard who is made out to be some sort of legal expert but actually got called into the Senate to defend threats he made against the Supreme Court on Twitter (best lawyer). And Kevin "Kathryn" Gibes, who's had two "vaginas" made for him, because he let the first one close up, and if you're a US citizen, your tax dollars paid for both - and his breast enhancements; he makes no efforts to hide any of his fetishes and ties all of them to being trans.

And there's the big rubber boob shop teacher, and every male on a lesbian dating site, and every single individual who has ever made their presence known in a place it was not wanted on behalf of their super important "trans" or "queer" identity - whether it's "gay" trans men screaming about homophobia from actual gay men or "lesbian" trans women talking about how actual lesbians need to suck their dicks.

The problem with this is that there are huge scaffolds in place to support all of this madness, rather than make it meaningful for trans people to exist. There are hordes of mommies trying to trans their children, and because we want to love and protect children, of course that rallying cry about children needing health care must be heeded! And if so many people cry about genocide for so long and so often, there must be some sort of truth! If websites post headlines about trans people being murdered in the streets, without any justification for it being a hate crime, it still must have been one! If a legislator introduces a bill that even whiffs of trans, it's set out to kill all trans people! There's no room to call out weirdoes and creeps because they're driving the caravan.

The LGB should do its best to call out predators and pedophiles, to make our community unwelcome for those individuals, and speak out against situations or bills that look to actually harm gay and bisexual people, and cut off the TQ entirely. I have no doubt there are bad actors in the LGB, as there are in every community, but it is the job of those of us in that community to take responsibility and call them out, not to give them the microphone and let them dictate the score.

[back-and-totheleft]

The Metrograph Interview

MICHAEL M. BILANDIC: I was just telling our friend Gabe that you were the first person to speak to my class at NYU, two weeks after 9/11.

OLIVER STONE: I really spoke to your class two weeks after?

MB: Yeah. Maybe not exactly two weeks, but shortly after. I moved to New York for film school in August, 2001. Then, all of a sudden, this historic event happens. Everything gets cancelled. It’s total chaos. And when they finally bring classes back, they tell us our first visiting lecturer is Oliver Stone. You showed up, you’d come straight from Ground Zero.

OS: Was it a small class?

MB: It was pretty small. Everyone was arguing about geopolitics, Afghanistan, commando units, Bin Laden. And the late underground filmmaker Nick Zedd stormed in and made some unclear accusation about Natural Born Killers (1994) ripping off War is Menstrual Envy (1992). I have no idea what his angle was, but the whole experience was a memorable introduction to film school. Are you still involved with NYU?

OS: I gave a screenwriting scholarship to NYU. Every year people get a certain amount of money if they win the prize as a screenplay writer. I was trying to develop the screenplay aspect of NYU because when I was there, no one took a screenwriting class, except me, maybe five other people. They never had screenwriting as an understanding. Cameras, yeah, but they were not into screenwriting. Anyway.

MB: Education, and particularly the teaching of history, has been a major theme throughout your career. I especially love The Untold History of the United States. In the intro, you describe the disappointment you felt reading your kids’ history textbooks as a catalyst for embarking on your own American history survey. Simultaneously, I’ve been dying to ask you about Dream School (2013-2014), the reality show you were on, where celebrities like you, David Arquette, 50 Cent, and Suze Orman teach a group of high school dropouts in a highly experimental classroom environment. You’re trying to explain the nuances of World War II and Vietnam to these disaffected zoomers. I’m curious about your thoughts on teaching history. Also, what was it like being on a reality show, when it’s a genre you’re so critical of?

OS: I did that years ago! Is it still on the air?

MB: It’s floating around.

OS: It was very strange. That was not satisfactory. I tried.

For Untold History, I came under the influence of my friend, Peter Kusnick, who is a teacher of American history for 30, 40 years now at American University. He’s a very bright man, and a liberal—a real liberal, not a phoney liberal. He’s not a Hillary Clinton liberal, he’s—he studied history. Unfortunately, America has not studied its role in World War II. [In the show] we made the point about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan; it’s crucial to understand why we did that, and how that happened. And we’ve been lying about it for 60, 70 years, just lying about it… This history is crucial. And as you can see, I stopped making movies at a point, and Untold History took three, four years to make. It was just a mess, trying to put it into a film version. I’m very proud of that, I’m glad you pointed it out. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, trying to tell the true history of the United States from 1898 to now.

MB: It’s so ambitious. I can’t even imagine the process of putting it together.

OS: The 12 parts take us from 1898, up to Obama [being re-elected] in 2012. People always say, “Why don’t you do Trump?” Well, you know, it’s not that simple to go back in. It takes money and time. But I do think it’s clear we’re on the wrong path. It just didn’t have to be this way, you understand? We have a strain of aggressiveness in this country. I don’t know that we can overcome ourselves, control ourselves.

MB: Metrograph is about to screen Natural Born Killers. I love movies like this where there’s a sense of chaos in front of the camera and behind the camera, and you can just feel it, you know? The prison break scene is a perfect example. It’s explosive. You’re watching it and you’re enjoying it, but also trying to imagine the reality of Tom Sizemore, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Harrelson, and all these actual inmates playing it out in the moment. What draws you to creating these chaotic scenarios? And how do you feel when you’re in them? Do you feel blissed out and calm, or is it a frenzied adrenaline rush?

OS: I love chaos, and I love energy, chaotic energy. And when you can control it to some degree, it makes for a powerful picture. It’s in The Doors, too, if you see it. It’s in the war scenes, and in several movies, Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July. The chaos, the madness of the situation—rock ’n’ roll breeds that, mob scenes breed that, public frenzies, like the January 6 insurrection. We saw it in Born on the Fourth of July where they’re having civilian protests against the Vietnam War. I love that stuff. And I love to get an entire movie set up to this level of madness where you sense the crowd, and the extras sense it, “Wow, it’s really happening.” So many of those people who did The Doors in ’91 said to me, “Wow, this is my first time experiencing the ’60s.” [Laughs.] I can’t say it was the ’60s but certainly it felt like it was a Jim Morrison concert, right?

Now, I saw a movie a few days ago, Babylon (2022) which, it’s ridiculous because [Damien Chazelle] lost touch with reality. I’ve read a lot about the 1920s, they didn’t have orgies like that. I mean, orgies existed, orgies happened for a reason, Cecil B. DeMille did the best orgies we know, in The Ten Commandments (1956), but Damien Chazelle—I liked the movie, it had many good things in it, but that opening was overdone. It was [hands gesture dramatically outward] everybody’s fucking everybody, it doesn’t work like that. A reason has to be established. You shouldn’t lead with the chaos. The chaos should come later, is what I think.

MB: On the topic of orgies, there’s a great movie someone’s going to have to make, and I would love for it to be you—about the FTX drama. These polyamorous nerds in the Bahamas, wreaking havoc on the crypto market, everyone theoretically scamming each other, and with so many political implications. Wall Street and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) reflected their moments so perfectly. I don’t know how much you’ve been up on this scandal; is it a story you would be interested in pursuing?

OS: I mean, I’ve done two Wall Street movies, and I don’t see myself going back into that. And it takes a lot of energy to make a movie, you can’t do it lightly. Also, you can’t chase the news. Never chase the news, it’s ridiculous. I came very close because of Snowden (2016), because of 9/11 with World Trade Centre (2006), and my George Bush movie [W, 2008]. I mean, I never gave up on following the news, but I don’t want to follow it too closely.

MB: I’d like to go back to the idea of prison breaks for a moment. I’m interested in the part of your autobiography where you describe living in the East Village in the late ’60s on 9th Street between Avenue B and C, in an apartment painted entirely red. At the time, you were writing a script called Break, the title being inspired by The Doors’ “Break On Through (To the Other Side).” Supposedly it has a crazy prison break in it, which is something you would explore in later work, like Midnight Express, and Natural Born Killers.

OS: Have you ever read it? Did you see the script?

MB: I haven’t.

OS: Oh, man. It’s a script. It’s insane! It’s my first script I ever wrote. At the end—I wrote two, three versions, and the last one, I think, was the most surreal. He goes to Vietnam [as a soldier]; he dies in Vietnam—he gets killed, by American soldiers. He goes to the underworld, the Egyptian underworld. And he’s judged the old way by the Egyptian gods, very tough. He ends up, I forget how exactly, but in a prison in California, facing smuggling charges—which I did. And from there comes “the break.” There’s no hope in going through society’s methods; there’s no hope listening to conventional thought, because in conventional thought all the bad guys were in Vietnam as soldiers, you see? So he ends up in the American prison. And he breaks out of the American system, all of them break out, and that’s sort of his liberation. So I suppose I’m a rebel at heart. I’ve lived that role, to some degree as a moviemaker. And it’s been tough, because, you know, at times, they’ve given me praise, but at times they really hate me because I am trying to say things as they are.

MB: You certainly took a lot of heat for the tone of Natural Born Killers. It was really interesting re-watching it and thinking about the challenges of satire. Entertainment and politics, these days, seem to have morphed into one. We had Trump doing a borderline Andrew Dice Clay impersonation, and even Zelensky’s a former late-night comedian. Natural Born Killers, and W, really succeed in finding humor in all the madness, but it feels like such a challenge to approach serious issues from a satirical angle today when everything’s blurred into entertainment or “content.”

OS: Well, first of all, it may seem that way to you, but it’s always been that way. We had Ronald Reagan in 1980, who was an actor, and people were saying the same thing you’re saying now: if an actor can get elected—and a B-actor, according to many people—then what’s the meaning of politics? So they always say that. Trump is an aberration—but no more so than Reagan was. They made much too much of a frenzy out of Trump; they blew up everything he did into this massive disaster for the country. It’s all hype. I agree Trump had many failings, but we feasted on it. And as a result, we don’t think. This is, again, the control of the media—they tell you what to think, and they tell you how to think. Well, if you really think this through, Trump is a minor inconvenience compared to what Bush Jr. did to this country. What he did in 2000, by setting up the War on Terror, starting a war across the globe with some 70 fucking countries, to create this concept, the United States is going to be the dominant country in the world, and “you’re either with us or against us.” That is a stupid fucking policy, completely self-destructive. We’ve spent more and more money chasing more and more bullshit, starting little brushfire wars everywhere we can, sending troops everywhere. It’s been a nightmare. It all goes back to Bush and his group. To ignore that is to miss the whole point of what’s going on in the 21st century, to me; to concentrate on Trump is ridiculous.

Going back to Natural Born Killers, at the time I said it’s a satire because it’s not realistic. In the sense that, if you look at the violence—I was criticized repeatedly for the violence—the violence is ridiculous, it’s absurd, it’s comic violence. In Born on the Fourth of July I showed what one bullet can do to a spine; it can destroy a spine and destroy a man’s life. So I’ve been very realistic in my violence, in Platoon, and Salvador (1986). But in this one case, I exaggerated everything in the movie to make the point that our society was completely fucked. At the time it was the O.J. Simpson trial, and I was disgusted with it. There had been a series of things that happened in the ’90s that had been sensationalized in the media—murders, a woman cutting off a man’s dick was all over the headlines—it was National Enquirer stuff that was being put on the front pages. I noted that; I read this draft by Tarantino; I bought it—I bought it from the producers, not from him. And I changed a lot of it because it was shallow—to my mind, it was shallow and I wanted to go deeper. But I thought it was a very good surface story. The film was controversial from the beginning because Tarantino was always objecting to anybody who changed a word of his script—you know, his bullshit, he is the greatest of all time, and no one can touch what he does. But we changed it because he’d sold it, he didn’t own it. So anyway, we made the movie. And it was misunderstood from the beginning, misunderstood completely—partly that’s because of PR, partly because Tarantino was attacking the movie. But if you look at the movie—now is a good time to look at it—you’ll see a lot of what we were talking about has certainly come true in our media.

MB: It’s undeniable.

OS: The American media has glorified violence all my life. To begin with—before Natural Born Killers—on television, the emphasis, the ratings, were on violence for the most part. Shows, Westerns, where people bang, bang, you’re dead. That was the most popular form of communication in America, killing somebody. It got out of hand in the ’90s. And it’s gotten worse, and worse, and worse… The American media is the most dominant, pervasive, controlling nanny state I’ve ever seen. I can’t stand it. As you know, I’ve been fighting the media for most of my life.

MB: At the time you were also critiquing a culture of gossip and a culture of surveillance. And this is before social media?! Then that arrives and everything you’re arguing just gets exploded; every little thing becomes sensationalized, and whatever goes viral is always anger inducing. You’re on Instagram and Twitter, what’s your relationship with social media been like?

OS: I follow it to a degree, I’m not a hound. It tires me. I’m older, man, I just, I can’t follow all the bullshit. I thought it was interesting when Musk took it over, because he did purge the—the whole thing on Twitter is its government, the government got involved in media. They’ve been heavily involved with Facebook, telling them who the enemy is, what to think, how to think, and telling the same thing now to the Twitter people. Everyone’s cowed by the government, because it’s hard to say no to the big boss. We’re basically a form of social dictatorship, maybe, in the sense that you’re shamed if you don’t go along with the group. Sure, they attack some big targets, but they also scare off the smaller people who like to think for themselves.

MB: Have you been following the Twitter Files stuff? It ties in, I feel, to a lot of themes you’ve explored in your work.

OS: The investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, he’s done a lot of good work. And people like Glenn Greenwald. Many of them have pointed out that the Twitter Files has been government propaganda in this war in Ukraine. And it has. It’s taken all the information that comes to the people who want to make Twitter a freeway for democracy; you can put out information about what the Ukrainians are doing, what the Russians are doing, but anything negative about the Ukrainians is removed by censorship. And you cannot say anything positive about the Russian position, or what even the Russian position is. So we’re telling the people, “This is what you have to think about Ukraine.” This is very dangerous, because we’re not telling the truth to our people. You’re not able to hear it. And this is disgusting. This is not what Twitter was made for. So I go back to my first point that this whole country has been locked up in a kind of social dictatorship. It’s like, you cannot think certain things.

MB: It’s interesting thinking about all of this in the context of the lockdown.

OS: Everybody’s got to have the same attitude about Covid—which is nonsense.

MB: I kept thinking about Talk Radio (1988), with Eric Bogosian playing the controversial radio personality, another of your films which feels relevant to current times. With podcasts, we’re almost back to AM talk radio, or a ham-radio type thing, where people are listening to wild stuff and developing these para-social relationships. It’s funny, I also just watched a documentary about Rockets Redglare; I had totally forgotten he was the killer in Talk Radio, and the guy on the phone.

OS: You saw a documentary about him where?

MB: It took a lot of work to find it, but I can send it to you. It’s from 2003, Rockets Redglare!

OS: It’s funny, I didn’t know about that. But Bogosian, he was very talented. A very good actor. The picture was unfortunately released at the wrong time, at Christmas. It didn’t belong at Christmas. It’s gone the way… but many people like you remember it so hopefully it’ll have some new life.

MB: I have to bring this up. The deleted scene in Natural Born Killers with the bodybuilding brothers is really one of my favorite scenes in a movie. I watch it all the time on YouTube.

OS: I’ve forgotten the scene, describe it to me.

MB: These two identical twin bodybuilders [Peter and David Paul, aka the Barbarian Brothers] are being interviewed by Robert Downey Jr. in a gym, and they’re describing how they had an encounter with Mickey and Mallory. The couple usually only let one person survive, but they let both survive in this case because the couple were fans of the brothers and only realized who they were halfway through chain-sawing their legs off. It’s revealed they’re in wheelchairs now—but they’re not mad because Mickey and Mallory passed “The Edge” onto them and they can workout harder than anyone else in the gym now because of their disability. I love it. I know you worked with Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian (1982), and in Natural Born Killers the brothers reference Pumping Iron (1977) to Downey. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about bodybuilding, that scene, and working with the Barbarian Brothers?

OS: [Laughs] I enjoyed it. There were a lot of cuts—I don’t know what version you have, but there is an R-rated version, and there’s an unrated version. Do you have the unrated version?

MB: Yeah.

OS: We had tremendous problems with it. Warner Brothers wanted an R version, and they really broke my chops. I had to go back to the MPAA several times, always making more and more [cuts]—it didn’t make any sense. I would say, “What you’re really objecting to is the chaos. You’re not objecting to the physical violence because it’s not really there. You’re objecting to the madness of the movie.” And, you know, that’s not right! Because it is a mad movie, you have to accept that it is a mad movie, like Clockwork Orange (1971) was. But they just couldn’t see the bigger picture. I was already in trouble, of course, with JFK; and I’d done Scarface (1983), as a writer, but I saw all that shit go down. They got crazy on Scarface, and they got crazy on Natural Born Killers. I make this point because they’re haggling over bullshit. When in reality, it’s the madness of our society that they’re not really dealing with. As I said to the press at the time—and they couldn’t understand what I was talking about—I said, “You know, the two killers are not so bad compared to Tommy Lee Jones, who’s the warden of a fucking madhouse, and runs it like a madhouse. Or take a look at Downey, the Downey character is insane. He wants to be a killer. He lives it. He’s living it through Mickey and Mallory, and that’s the media! I said, that’s what’s wrong! And look at the cop, the cop played by Sizemore. So of course I piss off everybody. [Laughs] I said, our cops, our prisons, our media are more fucked up than the two killers. They thought I was crazy.

MB: You see this with the censorship on Twitter, too, where you can’t even put a finger on why they ban certain things. Is it just because this is chaos or… ?

OS: I want to tell you a quick story, because my favorite deletion, and I really wish it were in there, is the courtroom scene in Natural Born Killers with [Woody Harrelson and] Ashley Judd. I think that’s hilarious. Have you ever seen the outtakes on that?

MB: Remind me.

OS: It’s the one where he goes, “Bills and bills and bills.” He gets permission to cross-examine her, Ashley Judd is one of the victims. It’s a touching scene because she is a very good actress and very convincing. And Woody—it’s just beautifully done. You got to watch it, man. It fits beautifully. The reason I took it out was length, and violence. It was too much at the time. But it really belongs in the movie, it’s in the middle—they get busted, and before they go to jail they have this trial. But he wants to be his own lawyer. He cross-examines her—and he stabs her in the heart! And of course [laughs], it’s the worst thing you can do! I mean, they’re going to throw them in the dungeon now! Ashley Judd is a sweetheart—she gets killed, oh my God. How bad can these people be? Right? I love it. I love it. [Laughs] That’s the greatest scene to me, that’s the one I miss.

MB: I just watched JFK Revisited (2021). It sounded like last week they were supposed to release the final files, then it didn’t happen.

OS: They just postponed it in another year. Or something like that. They won’t release the key files. But even then, I don’t know what would be in there. These are CIA people. They all were dealing with Cuban groups, people like [George] Joannides, [David Atlee] Phillips, Bill Harvey. Those are the guys you really want… [Allan] Dulles if possible, but there’s no files on Dulles. The CIA is where, in my opinion, you really got to look, because they were running the whole show, including [Lee Harvey] Oswald.

MB: Alright, last thing. So as we are entering 2023, I’ve been reading all these year-end lists, wrapping up the year. I was curious what your summary of 2022 would be? And what are you looking for in 2023?

OS: Let’s talk film first. As a filmmaker, I finished a very complicated documentary, a scientific one called Nuclear Now, which is on the need for bringing back nuclear energy now, and pushing it because it is the only way we’re going to close the gap with the vast amount of energy we’re going to need by 2050. Hopefully it will be out in the New Year, very early, and people will see it, but it’s a very important thing to me, it’s the most important subject on Earth. So that’s where I am at. Secondly, I co-wrote a screenplay with a partner, which I think is—I cannot tell you what the subject is, it’s not that I don’t reveal what I’m about to or hope to do, and if all goes well I’ll be able to make it in 2023, but it hasn’t been an easy business, that’s for sure. I haven’t done a feature film since 2016: Snowden. I did JFK Revisited in 2019, and Putin [The Putin Interviews] in 2017, so I’ve been busy with documentaries more than features. I’m looking forward to making one more—I hope—as well as releasing Nuclear Now.

MB: Nice.

OS: On the world front, it’s always unstable, the world has always been in change. People over-exaggerate, it’s always a dark time, you know? Americans have a very limited view of the world because they live subjected to the American media.

Now, for 2023, we’re in a shithole. As a country, we keep backing the military, we keep putting a fortune into military spending—and now we’re paying for the Ukraine war, which is insane. Because we started the war, we trapped the Russians into going in there with our policies. In other words, most of the instability in the world is created by us. And we won’t admit it. People in America don’t know about that because they have no idea we’re the provokers—we’re the most provocative country in the world. And as long as we can’t see it, we’re hypnotized. We’re hypnotized by our media. We don’t see beyond our little American periscope.

-Michael M. Bilandic interviews Oliver Stone, Metrograph, Dec 2022 [x]

[josiebelladonna]

well, that’s the last time i hand out advice on facebook (then again, why do i bother with that site anymore: spending another month away from there before i decide to fully delete, i guess).

to give some context: if you’ve seen my “private” journals on here, you’ve probably seen me talk about this one friend that is very tmi with pretty much everything, including her sex life. you’ve probably seen screen captures from her in my rage against Facebook post on here the other day: she’s the depressing one. a very “woe is me” type person, which is not at all how i remembered her from when i met her when she was a teenager: she was vivacious and really fun and sweet as teen. always made me laugh, too. so, not only to see her like that is incredibly jarring to me, but the fact that it’s every other post, it was starting to get to me. so, yesterday morning, i saw her being all mopey like “i pushed away another friend because of my silence”.

and i unleashed. from her ranting about her job, about friendships, about her sex life (she’s apparently vanilla and she feels ashamed of that, which was oddly comforting for me, and i said “there’s no shame in that”; i also said “it’s really as easy as talking to them”), about making everything about herself… basically, my whole entire point was “there’s a solution to every single one of your problems but why you aren’t doing them and why no one is saying it is beyond me”. i also basically added, “i’m sorry ahead of time if i sound harsh but it’s obvious to me that you’re making a cry for help.” i also told her to stop making excuses, too: really, someone will give decent advice and she’ll say some convoluted answer that makes no sense when it could actually be useful.

you know what she did? you know what she fucking did?

she got all up on her high horse and said “look, i call them my partner because they aren’t cis” (i said something about that, but she completely took it out of context. i said to stop calling them “partner” because it sounds antiquated and clinical and because it doesn’t sound right in junction with opening the conversation to them. even if they are trans, you can use whatever terminology you want, forget my hangup about that word for a second because what i said has nothing to do about me: i didn’t say all that because i knew for a damn fact she wasn’t going to get it).

she also replied something to my comment but i didn’t see it because i knew what it was, i could see it coming from space.

so, i basically said, “wow, gee, thanks. i try to give you advice because nobody is and you repay me with this?” i also added that i just didn’t know they weren’t cis (i really didn’t know, either, i had absolutely no clue they weren’t cis, like she literally never mentioned it one time. i’m as anti-terf as the next person but how was i supposed to know? i don’t know or even care about that person, anyway, but how in the world was i supposed to know?).

i was this close to saying “how dare you” because that was nerve, and the comments on that thread were even more nerve than that. but i don’t think that would have sufficed. instead, i said “what happened to you? i used to read your posts and find solace in them” because i know how to hit where it hurts. i also told her that she’s catty, condescending, and passive-aggressive, and i also added “sorry for trying to help you” so add “genuinely ungrateful” to that.

i also called her a liar: she quite literally lied to her employers about observing the sabbath on saturdays—i guess she converted to judaism at some point? i really have no clue: she’s one of those people who posts whatever pops into her mind, and facebook’s algorithm being what it is, and my not-really-using-facebook-anymore-other-than-to-check-in, it’s a tall order to keep track—and i said why didn’t you mention that because every major american employer is equal opportunity and they would understand completely. instead, she lied to them about it which, on its own, is against jewish beliefs (even i can tell you that), but i said that’s a ridiculously easy way to get fired, especially since—i don’t know, do they still do this?—employers would look at your online profiles to see how you behave and if you even have a presence. that’s just one lie i saw from her, too: i caught her lying a number of times from this week alone.

it’s so weird and depressing. it’s kind of heartbreaking, actually. and sometimes i wonder if being blunt is even worth it all because “someone’s feelings might get hurt”.

but this former sweet unproblematic 14-year-old kid with a good heart, a love for animals and books and music, a very sophisticated sense of humor, and with a spine, too (i remember she often stood up for herself) became this outright embittered, rude, patronizing, holier-than-thou, hateful, angry, habitually lying person- i don’t fucking know the gender and i’m literally too afraid to ask at this point because i swung a bat at a hornet’s nest just now. what’s worse is i’m seeing this so much lately, too: all everyone wants to do is coddle each other instead of actually being willing to pull up the ol’ bootstraps and pick yourself up to actually get better. even if it means having to be blunt. even if it means having to sound a little mean because that’s how i picked myself up off the floor in my lowest moments. it’s called “tough love” for a reason: it’s supposed to show you reality with the intention of helping you get back to reality. it’s meant to dig you out.

last thing i said was “if you want me to be mean, okay, i’ll be mean from now on” just to kind of stick it to the whole coddling thing. i try to be a good friend, i really do… if you ask me, the whole “babying” trend i’ve been seeing pretty much everywhere makes me wonder if i really am. first, it was the green druidess and her parade of bullshit; then, it was the incessant never-ending void of nonsense that are posts about ~mutuals~ ; and now this… it’s all dehumanizing, actually, this current generation of constant waiting on each other hand and foot to the point of having to walk on eggshells with each other because say one wrong thing and you can get cancelled. i don’t know what you guys are all thinking but it’s not healthy.

[afr0-thunder]

[Poor Chronicles Pt. 37]

Topics: Baby Mommas and their Types/Work (“Off Days”)/Photography/Girls/Read, Reply or Delivered (RRD)/Shopping/Work (Personal Image)/Weed/Football

I’m so sick of one of my future baby mommas. I had replied to her story, telling her, that her ass was ugly. I was not lying, bitch. You are so fucking ugly. You and your little gremlin ass boyfriend. She fucking left me on read. What a bitch? I hate her ass. Imagine your bitches…in bed…with some *triple disrespectful African American explicatives*. Now I COULD do something about this (for her), HOWEVER…I’m not stepping out of bed for a bitch, an *African American explicative* or anybody else. Y’all bitches are hopping out [*sparkles* ~ for me ~ *sparkles*]. I’m sure one day this feeling will be owned by them, but that’s not hitting. Retaliation does not soothe over being in bed with my bitch and and her wasting your time and money does not make me less mad about it. How could I let someone get under my skin to the point where I seek revenge though?

Another one. Shared a white influencer’s shirtless picture. Yuck! I asked if that was her type.

These bitches drive me insane.

I was off yesterday, they called me to come in. I intended on taking pictures. Exactly one month from my last photo shoot. I intended on starting a monthly 17th post (and because being 17 was so lit, ironically). Weekly or more, honestly. This foiled my plans. Imagine awakening stiggity-stoned from an hour to two hour long nap to your manager asking if you’re available, an hour ago. I say, “What time?”. I arrive 20 minutes early. My hispanic manager (not the one who says “Nigga”), joked with me about becoming a manager at the other location. I don’t see this for myself, but others do. This will make for 8 straight days of work. Amazing. I will follow this up with a 13 day long vacation. What the fuck am I? In high school? I presume I’ll be called in or a shift may arise. I hope not. I can use this time to take those pictures. It is rather piercing outside though.

I was asked to visit my regular location today. I was asked to work with the most flirtatious bitch alive (manager) and the tall girl. We’ll be calling her Horndawg, not only due to her last name, but feeling, although concealed, she LOVES to get off. Every time I see her I wonder when she’ll stop flirting with the world.

Horndawg, on the other hand…is there a name for sexual attraction based on scent? I damn near lose track of time when in arms reach of this bitch. I wanted to ask her if she was 5��8 or 5’9. Our coworkers watch us very aggressively, it’s almost dead silent, so I throw in a few interactions. I think they think the height thing is “cute”. Otherwise I would tip the manager off to how she had me fucked up. Also, presumably homosexual for a wage. Other than that every time we get too close, I want to kiss on this bitch’s neck and I think she wants to put a hickey on mine. It’s a very aggressive feeling. I asked her a question. Not only did she almost pop a blood vessel in her eye trying to respond, but she gave me the “Hey Daddy” eyes. She’s tall, but not taller than I. Also, I assumed she was a student…she is still around currently, this thickens the plot. A local? Anyway, in 2016, I told my friend (married woman who I said isn’t taking our relationship seriously) that my dream woman has to be the baddest bitch…with the FATTEST ass. She has to be so bad, I’d eat her ass. This is her, I’d spit right in her butt.

I replied to this one girl’s story. Pushed my last DM right through. Said she had gorilla grip coochie (not verbatim, how the fuck would I know), I never considered this likely. She just might be the perfect bitch, if so. She liked it. She frequents Chicago, so this would be fun. She fucked this other guy I used to be friends with. I don’t have any doubts. I just want to prove his dick game is terrible. This bitch’s ass is fat from the FRONT. Commented on this asian girl from high school’s post (wholesome). Never really thought she was cute, but now I want her squirting all over my dick. Outrageous. I’ve been going crazy about some asian pussy lately. Like I want her to look REAL asian, like straight out of a 90’s movie.

Shopping! Oh shopping. I decided I would give hoodies a run (if there’s good enough options). I have quite a few newer clothing options that are for colder weather, but I may empty stock quickly. Either hoodies or plain tee shirts next, but hoodies are limited due to color theme. Tees are even more limited for designs due to there being none and the only option being repetition in colors. Which is what I wanted to do anyway.

I see nice clothing and accessories for my whores. Feels like it’s their style, but this is designer drip baby. Chicago only rocks designer, bitch.

My former favorite coworker got a neck tattoo. I said I’d avoid getting mine to remain professional and the other one would be a terrible marketing strategy.

I may have to slow down on the weed (unfortunately). I am seeing a problem in my ways. He has now missed *$180 of my money. Even though he sold me thorns, last. I may use this for my hoodies. I may just starve and smoke less weed. That wouldn’t save so I may just stop smoking. To be determined.

- MH (2023)

[12/18/2023 - 8:00PM]

Go Lamar Jackson, Lions could beat any NFC team except the Eagles. 49ers could lose to the Cowboys. Eagles over everyone. Texans making a push without CJ Stroud.

Ravens to Super Bowl

#3 Texas to CFP Championship #GoHorns … side note thought this content creator I followed was delusional rooting for them…but then they washed Alabama. They haven’t been good since like fucking Vince Young in ‘07. I’m rooting for the 2016 “Juju On That Beat” Texas Longhorn to make a comeback now.

[sanchoyo]

i promise i will read the manga!! but um. well. now i’m just so curious i gotta know. just how blorbo can cara go. i wanna take a graceful step backwards and head-first into the rabbit hole. please i gotta know

- saguaro anon pt 2

(i promise it’s me again i swearzit. not that it isn’t easy to lie of course i just think that’d be the funniest thing in the world. there can only be ONE saguaro liker everyone pass the original anon message around the circle if you’d like a turn with the saguaro anon.)

(speaking of i’m chewing on the art of them. i love them so bad they make me wanna draw swords. obsessed also with the dichotomy of physical/spiritual prowess that contradicts a more common “pacifist priest” archetype through swords. still a very graceful way to slay but between that strength/faith dichotomy and their dichotomy with the queen’s science... it’s so evocative of a righteous paladin. but they are also so eepy.)

not u sending this right after I sent a friend a 10000+ word essay to a friend on discord abt cara. pls. the timing is incredible im bouncing cara around in my brain…

SAGUARO ANON!!! HI!!! (wait thats cute. naming urself as an enjoyer of them. my heart will explode fr thank u sm for enjoying my ocs ;_; u are the champion liker of them….this is ur burden to bear)

I mean, don't feel obligated to read the manga/watch the show(s)(either of them! still so happy we got a reboot 20 years after the original…) its just. would fill on context for Some Things (also is a gateway into magical girls if ur not already into them) and I always take a chance to rec it. but..I do try to make things understandable w/out it? I hope?

Cara…im trying to think of what I can say publicly abt her without spoiling her whole story. (I plan to probably make it a novel-sized fanfic and...with 2-3 illus per chapter…it works better as a comic, but the energy to do it + how little reception I got when I tried it…TwT </3) this got. erm. long. so under the cut? I dont THINK anything is TOO spoilery, but if anyone wants to wait until the story is actually being written, maybe skip this one :3c

ok so. my sweet caroline (ba ba ba) 'cara' testout-seebauer, (god what a good name)...… she's like. my wildcard character. full of surprises. full of anxiety. as someone who is also full of anxiety I can say sometimes getting too anxious makes people lash out, seem irritable. get this girl some noise-cancelling headphones tbh. she's also quiet, which, people around her misinterpret as 'oh shes brooding and mysterious' but she's 15. she's the Most 15 Year Old, and all that entails.

She, uh…let me just say she is about as aware as magical girl tropes as Mira is. she makes a point to declare herself as the 'dark magical girl rival' to Mira's heroine persona. which is totally a Normal Thing for anyone with Normal Motivations to say, obviously. (mira aggressively turns a blind eye to how absolutely weird that is because it fits with what she also wants, but other characters are even like, hey thats..questionable? why is a human working with the Aliens Who Want All Humans Dead?? you might ASSUME tragic backstory, but I Love Subverting Expectations. she has a pretty good family life!) she's not as much as an edgelord as this type of character should be in theory, but she IS dramatic 🤔

she's actually somewhat naive and makes the worlds most questionable judgement calls and has the worst sense of who to trust. she's a nerd. she speaks like 4 languages because she was moved around a lot up until she was about 13 and has lived in a handful of countries (if you ask her, she'd say shes american bc thats where shes lived the longest, but her dad is half british half japanese raised in japan and left when he was 18 for america, and her mother is afro-latina american. she strongly takes after her mom in looks but got her dads hair texture :> )

it's a running gag that she knows how to do an improbable amount of things and she always brushes this off her parents were very indulgent and she had a hard time sticking to anything. why does she know origami and karate and how to make balloon animals and ballet and sword fighting and art?? oh but she can only do the very basics of any of the various things, she's not like, outstanding at very many things admittedly and cannot commit to anything. she has...approximate knowledge of many things...It must be said, for the majority of the alien ocs I have...shes the first human theyve met. so u can imagine this gives them very skewed idea of how many things humans can do...

a lot of the characters n plots in tm2 are things I think were tragically underused and under-explored in tmm. in particular the things about her that I draw from are largely things from tokyo mew mew a la mode. (which as of now is free to read on archive.org and is only two volumes!! its the sequel to tmm ^_^...) anyway regarding that...there's a hint in her full name no one as picked up on yet and I shant say more on that. (...do people not pick up on certain naming schemes in tmm aside from the girls having food names? I dont know. this is one of those 'would only pick up on it if ur familiar w tmm things but! I dont even think ppl who HAVE read it have noticed yet.. tbf I only revealed her full name last year I think!)

all of the girls have symbolism with the animal dna they're infused with. cara's a snake. which is such a double sided thing. a lot of people are scared of snakes, lots of imagery of being two-faced or deceitful BUT also, like, 'transformations/rebirth' (shedding of the snake skin) and the caduceus!!! (hermes association, loosely :)) fun. her weapon being a shield + gramophone combo thing now reflects a lot about her too :)

shes SHORT. shes freckled. she cuts her own hair. shes objectively just really funny in a messed up way because everything is extreme when ur 15, its seriously so. just. shes so so so dramatic and gay, my god. its painful to watch. its painful to WRITE. rancid at just COMMUNICATING. she doesnt necessarily even want to be a magical girl its rotten work but my god she'll do it she DOES like the genre but she is so so scared and would probably rather NOT be doing more than like, cosplay. fighting things or people = scary. anxiety is real. but here she is! for some ungodly reason! eeey exposure therapy amiright fellow anxiety sufferers. queen put her and sapote together because sapote was the only alien whod volunteer to get infused and become a mew mew lol sapote is outgoing and queen figured this would offset cara's...*vaguely gestures* everything pretty well. and that sapote would be able to sus out anything cara might be hiding. queen knows sapote's smarter than expected and trusts her a lot cara and sapote are SUCH a funny duo 😭

cara is like. she has problems. and instead of solving them in any rational way she ends up creating 15 more severe problems about it. pitiful little meow meow mew mew

also I'm glad u enjoyed the lil doodle of them, had to toss them in after ur nice message :) (+I will take any excuse to draw or talk abt my ocs r u kidding. i love them)

replying to the very last bit of ur message abt our friend saguaro: WAAAA THAT MAKES ME SO HAPPY THAT THEY MAKE U WANNA DRAW SWORDS!! (do it. swords are fun to draw) u hit the nail on the head with: 'the dichotomy of physical/spiritual prowess that contradicts a more common “pacifist priest” archetype through swords. still a very graceful way to slay but between that strength/faith dichotomy and their dichotomy with the queen’s science… it’s so evocative of a righteous paladin.' the. understanding. the analysis. u are so correct. holding ur hand about this. thank u. thank u.

since u arent a tmm watcher/reader. I have to tell you. deep blue, their god? is the main final bad guy in tmm. we have SO SO SO little info about him. I had to make up so many stupid little headcanons surrounding him + the religion and what would possibly happen post-canon. which is only vaguely tangentially related but I have Many Thoughts. he uses a sword, so of course saguaro would Want To as well! and as far as 'gods' go, deep blue is. hm. a violent one. saguaro is incredibly nice! but is still a devout cult member follower of a violent god who they WILL spill blood in the name of. they WILL tell queen to her face that no, she should NOT be the leader, that should be someone who follows deep blue-sama! and they are only following her for a good view from the top to spot carry out his will, because surely deep blue guided them to be so skillful for a REASON, they MUST be useful to him when he finally reappears! and there is NO room for doubt in their mind he WILL. (jaws theme ominously plays in the distance)

queen and saguaro are both ppl who pride themselves on being civil and well-mannered, so you can imagine the sheer passive-aggressiveness in their convos. they're useful, they're probably the BEST swordsmaster, and they've proven to be very diplomatic and can bridge the gap queen sorely needs to with the other straggling deep blue followers, and queen isn't one to throw away a pawn, so she ultimately sees it as putting up with an annoyance for the greater good. (its not like deep blue could possibly return or anything! jaws theme sounds louder and closer)

everyone else in queens little upper posse thinks theyre super weird. …except cara! (we've come full circle!) because shes human! and! has no frame of reference! for deep blue related things! (well…at least, not in the way everyone else would've) shes dealt with like, mormons or thse door to door religious ppl, to her its like. whatever. same difference. saguaro isnt mean to her solely because shes a human like SOME people in queen's upper circle are. in fact, they're really actually very nice to her! and hey, she likes swords! and they have a calming presence, which is GREAT when u are a little shaky chihuahua abt everything.

I have this scene planned out where cara wakes up from a nightmare SCREAMING, sapote's room is right beside her and hey thats her little buddy so ofc she runs in. but cara wont talk to her, and sapote is like. kid I Am Not Leaving You Alone rn I Am Vaguely Worried and you need someone Adult Shaped to talk to. so caras like. whatever get saguaro then. and sapote is BAFFLED, but it makes perfect sense. because unlike sapote, they won't badger her or try and get her to spill anything, they won't try forcing her into a hug, if she asks them to just talk and distract, they're happy to. they aren't going to go spill her secrets and they CERTAINLY wont rat her out for saying anything untowardly about queen.

sapote accuses them of trying to yank cara into their little cult over this of course. kadskj

oops. thats a very long ramble about nothing very clear. I'm trying to be GOOD about not spoiling my own darn story, but the temptation to talk about it is so strong. I'm always super happy to share stuff on it and when ppl show interest it makes my heart explode. thank uuuu so much again TwT

[grahamstoney]

My Life So Far by Jane Fonda

New Post has been published on https://grahamstoney.com/self-esteem/my-life-so-far-by-jane-fonda

My Life So Far by Jane Fonda

I am a generation too late to really know much about Jane Fonda, and started reading her autobiography when a friend recommended it. There is lots of name dropping; clearly Ms Fonda was well-connected in her prime, but I don’t recognise most of the names since they were just before my time. Nevertheless, it’s a compelling story.

I was fascinated to read how such a successful woman could be haunted all her life by feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Despite her feminist leaning and her courage (or was it foolishness?), there’s a strong theme that without the support and approval of men, she felt worthless.

I found her description of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese war a disturbing indictment on the power wielded by the American military and the way in which the U.S. President of the time used it to play out his power games in a foreign country about which he had no understanding. The parallel between Vietnam and the current Iraq war became more startling to me the more I learned about what had gone on in Vietnam. I grew up with the belief that the U.S. were unquestionably the “Good Guys”. After all, they were instrumental in saving Australia from being invaded by Japan in World War II. To realise that they had been batting for the wrong team in Vietnam, and now Iraq, I found truly disturbing.

The other theme that struck a chord with me, whether Fonda intended to or not, was that naivety and courage sometimes go hand-in-hand. It was clear that some of her actions, such as her visit to Vietnam to highlight the U.S. bombing of dikes in the river delta, was amazingly naive. She put herself in considerable danger, and was at times manipulated by her hosts. Yet it was also enormously powerful. It reminded me of times in my life where I have thought “I’m really being very naive here”, yet gone ahead anyway because I thought there was a more important cause than just avoiding my own foolishness. And these have been some of the most invigorating times for me.

I found some of Fonda’s off-hand comments about perceived differences between the experience of women and men rather polarizing. She appears to believe that men are largely immune from the sort of self-esteem and sexuality issues that she sees so many women suffering from; if only this were the case. In fact, men suffer from these things too; but it shows in different ways. Hers manifested in an eating disorder and deep-seated need to please men. Nixon had a deep-seated need to create an enemy in his mind out of a peace-loving people on the other side of the planet so he could try to wipe them out. These are both manifestations of the same thing: poor self-esteem. They just came out in different ways. One inwardly destructive, the other outwardly. But even this isn’t necessarily a gender-based difference.

Fonda make the compelling point that aggression and war are generally seen as masculine and active, while peace is seen as feminine and passive. The U.S. Presidents who initiated and supported unwinable wars in Vietnam and Iraq were doing so because they had a point to prove: that they would be strong in the face of a perceived threat. Big boys playing with toys to prove who was the bigger man. The lies and deceit necessary to maintain the charade belied what was really going on. Fonda gives a fascinating account of a meeting she initiated with a group of disgruntled ex-Vietnam vets who were angry at her anti-war activism. They still harboured terrible grief about the war, but felt it unpatriotic to be angry at the government despite the lies it had told; so they aimed their anger at anti-war activists like her instead. She diffused the situation by getting them to talk about what was really going on for them. Vilifying anti-war activists like Fonda was just part of the governments’ efforts to sustain the war so that the men in power could prove how manly they were, and the veterans were just some of the victims. You would think the people in power would have learned something; except for the obvious parallels with the current war in Iraq, which those in power are oblivious to. Fonda points out that at the same time the U.S. Were sending troops into Iraq, their government was also slashing benefits for returned servicemen, and that at the time of the Vietnam war, anti-war activists were actually more supportive of returned servicemen than were pro-war activists. Reading the press you would have got the opposite viewpoint.

I don’t know if Fonda used a ghost writer; the story gives the impression that she wrote it herself, and that some of the pieces of the puzzle of her life didn’t fit together until she spoke to other people about issues during the writing process. I was surprised to find that her book held my attention through all 600 pages. I rarely make it through books that thick, and had no particular interest in Jane Fonda at the outset but nevertheless found her biography quite interesting.

[renafoo]

Eras

In a matter of less than a week, Othello undergoes a drastic change in character, which can be condensed and summarized into a few “eras”. He went from being in his Hot Husband & Soldier Era to his Paranoia Era and finally his Deranged Murderer Era. Life can’t always be broken down into distinct time periods. However, as the year wraps up, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my own - both little and big - “eras” (not as interesting as Othello’s, thankfully).

Model UN Era

I started the year off with the peak Model UN conference season. At HMUN Boston, I represented Panama in the Futuristic General Assembly - discussing mass surveillance in 2030. For MSUMUN, I was an Egyptian revolutionary leader during the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. Only in MUN are you rewarded for stealing priceless artifacts and overthrowing the government<3 There’s nothing like speed-walking to committee in heels, spending $4 on Dasani water at hotel gift shops, and nearly getting frostbite while touring Boston after a snowstorm. During this time, I remember being stressed but even more fulfilled.

Exams Era

AP season is the only era of 2022 that I wouldn’t willingly get into a time machine for. I really don’t miss watching every AP classroom video, spending hours at the library, or staying up until 4 AM the night before the AP Government exam memorizing my civil rights and liberties. As I practiced one bio FRQ after the other, I grew increasingly convinced that they weren’t in English and the writers were making up enzymes that didn’t actually exist.

Sunsets Era

Everything felt peaceful, colorful, and bright. Exams were done, school was ending, and the promise of summer was on the horizon. I traveled, went out with friends, and visited my hometown a lot. For those brief months, there was no pressure to accomplish anything. I had done everything I needed to do for junior year and I was rewarding myself by pursuing places that brought me nothing but simple enjoyment. An ELITE era.

Canvassing Era

I spent all of July working for a candidate during the Democratic primary (hint: he didn’t win) and canvassing in local suburbs in our district. Until then, I hadn’t realized how multidimensional the campaign trail could be. One moment you are having a lovely conversation about environmental policy and the next someone is slamming the door in your face. I loved seeing people’s adorable lawn decorations. I loved running from aggressive guard dogs. I loved driving down the sketchiest one-way gravel road ever with other interns and finding someone’s ritual site. We didn’t knock on that door. Despite the slightly traumatic moments, it was truly a career-defining and memorable experience for me!

Other Side of the Mason-Dixon Line Era

My summer vacation with my family was in North Carolina and D.C. The weather was deathly hot and humid but the scenery was gorgeous so that makes up for it. I visited gardens, explored the National Mall, and had delicious Italian and Korean food. It was a nice, relaxing trip and the American South has really grown on me:)

Panera Bread Era

This is my current era - senior year has been challenging but it’s going by surprisingly quickly. I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of money and time at Panera ever since school started and at this point, I consider it my second home. My motivation to get work done is declining exponentially, so while I’m not camping out at Panera for 6 hours, I experiment with strange workplace set-ups to keep things interesting. However, I’ve come to terms with the fact that no matter where I sit, I’ll never be caught up with world history readings.

-

This was most certainly an excuse to look through old photos and make little collages

Blog #5

[urfavlesb1anfather]

speaking up.

(tw: this post contains information about sexual assault, abuse, manipulation, and other possibly triggering topics. If you’re sensitive to any of these, I suggest not reading further than this.)

Before I explain exactly what this post is about, I’d like to start by saying that if you know any of the people mentioned in this post, please do not reach out to any of them or attack any of them. Yes all the people mentioned are small content creators with either less than 100 or just above 1000 followers on YouTube, that doesn’t mean that their story is any less valid or any of them deserve to be treated any differently than any other people who have been abused before. I’d also like to mention that yes, this situation is being dealt with, so I don’t have all the details. However, I’d still like to speak up about what happened since the victim in this situation is a friend of mine, and everyone deserves to have their story be heard. Thank you.

I’m not very sure exactly how to start something like this, so I’m just going to jump to the point and explain. Recently, one of my content creator friends, known online as Katie Bug, has been put into an abusive relationship and this situation has affected her. I’m not naming her legal first name or the other person, so for now we’re just referring to the alleged abuser in this situation as his current discord username, Polief. I’d like to mention that this situation is very recent (starting as far as I know around late 2023, or around the start of the American school year, mid August), so I’m not 100% on every detail. On parts that I’m not certain about, I will mention that, to keep everything here as honest as possible. The first interaction I had with Polief was around early September, however I didn’t get the chance to screenshot what was said. I will admit that at that point, I was worried and wasn’t thinking straight, so some words I said may not have been the most respectful things to say in that situation, and for that I do apologize. In short, the conversation started with me showing up in the place we (my online friend group) usually communicate (I will not be naming or describing as to keep everyone as anonymous as possible.) I had shown up since the place wasn’t super active at that time and I wanted to have a small conversation with Katie. Around the start of the conversation, I was slightly suspicious that someone else had gotten hold of Katie‘s account, as they were acting differently from her normal text patterns, attitude, etc. Now, when I did confront Polief about this (I didn’t know it was Polief at the time), they started to become aggressive, doing things like threatening to break Katie’s phone or hurt Katie. As far as I know, neither of those actions were taken, and that was the only things I can specifically remember from that conversation. Another similar situation showed up a few weeks later, on November 7, 2023. Again, I don’t have good screenshots to provide, but I will quote a few things Polief said that could be considered toxic or abusive. Key phrases said include “if u think i aint her just k-¥-$”, im bout to say something ill regret”, “st f u” (someone mentioned something that could prove he isn’t Katie). Another detail mentioned in this same conversation was said by Katie herself, which was said after she managed to get her phone back from Polief: “First I have to steal my phone back from a specific someone”. I’m including this here because it implies that not only did Polief take Katie’s phone without her consent, but also specifically refused to give it back, leading to Katie having to “steal my phone back” as she said. Another detail that can be mentioned is something Katie mentioned in another chat: “Polief (bf) is jealous. And about a week ago before we even got together he tracked down my email and got access to my YouTube account. And he’s mad that I keep coming to chat and freaked out and turne”.

I’m not sure exactly what the rest of her message included, as this is the only half I could find. I mention this quote too because it describes behavior Polief has shown that could be considered abusive or toxic, such as stealing someone’s email account out of jealousy, and getting upset about someone interacting with friends too often.

Things stayed calm after that for a while, until a few days ago, when Katie provided screenshots of Polief showing even more abusive behavior. Due to the date shown in the video (I took screenshots to upload to here), I believe the messages shown are from March 3, 2024.

As you can see, Polief can be seen threatening and showing toxic traits towards Katie. In a conversation the same day these screenshots were provided (March 4, 2024), Katie mentioned other details related to these screenshots and previous times Polief has attempted to hurt Katie.

One of the phrases mentioned in the second photo, “I’m used to this shit by now”, implies that Polief has tried before to break into Katie’s house and/or hurt her.

Now everything was fine again after that up until March 6, 2024. Polief had managed to get into Katie’s house and hurt her, which resulted in him trying to take her somewhere but being stopped by the police. That same day Katie and Polief were taking in for questioning, and Polief was later placed into Juvenile Detention. Due to messages Katie sent, I can believe that James also managed to r@pe her, and things she had said before imply that this wasn’t the first time.

I’d like to end this off by saying that even though Polief has been placed in Juvenile Detention, this is still a serious problem, and Katie isn’t the only one who’s been through this. However, Katie did reach out to someone, and that’s an important thing to do. Moving forward, to anyone who reads this, if someone does something similar to you or hurts you at all, don’t be afraid to reach out to the police. If they hit you once, they’ll do it again.

to the people mentioned in this post, feel free to reach out to me if you want me to take this down. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

[gulfportofficial]

I’m kinda compelled to explain or just talk about why I’m being Like This about Ana Mardoll and Lockheed Martin, like specifically him (”Like This” as in not shutting up about it and obsessively reading ALL the tweets and bad faith arguments lol.) At the risk of giving myself a wee anxiety spiral about it, I think I will do so below the cut.

SO ANYWAY as you all know because I also never shut up about it, I am very old. Well, too old to be reading this much internet drama lol. I’m 38, which I tell you to contextualize the rest of this tale, starting with the fact that I was 18 when 9/11 happened, and at that time I was out of home, working full time, living a weird life with a man who would turn out to be a very bad person. 

I mention both the weird life and 9/11 because it’s crucial to understand that I was both isolated by a man who was treating me badly, and would go on to treat me criminally badly, and very quickly involved in anti-war activism. At that time I wasn’t remotely involved in organizing, didn’t know any organizerzers, I just. You know. Have never liked imperialism or the senseless murder that goes along with it and went to all the protests. 

A couple of years later I had left the bad man and I was with my husband... and that’s its whole own other thing. My husband definitely was... well, this is not a story about that. Let’s just shorthand it with the fact that I thought he was a fucking prince because he didn’t [redacted] me or [redacted] me, which is a very low bar for a partner, and he was not, actually, obviously, a fucking prince. Suffice it to say, I was still being isolated, bullied, and manipulated in my own home by someone who was supposed to love me. And I was still involved in anti-war activism. Even though my husband was, at the time, AGGRESSIVELY “apolitical” lol.

I don’t know how to explain to you how different it was back then in the early-mid aughts. Facebook literally didn’t exist, no social media did. You had web forums and stuff, but like, for all the clickbait 2-minutes hate outrage issues with social media, what has fundamentally changed from that time is that you kind of have a sense generally of what is happening in the world. We did not have that in the aughts. It was so, so fucking hard to find information about what was actually happening in Iraq. All we had was “legitimate” news sources like TV and newspapers, and those sources LIED to us. Like, openly lied. When they didn’t do that, they misled. I remember once a NZ TV news story talking about how they in fact DIDN’T find WMDs in Iraq and they said this over footage of piles of WMDs? They were saying the “didn’t” real fucking quiet iykwim. 

So we read blogs. I remember how much it meant to me to find Joel Mathis’ blog on which he wrote about how authorizing torture for the occupation was ethically wrong. Not “wrong for American values” or “wrong according to the constitution”, ethically wrong. I read a whole bunch of stuff actually, but what is relevant here is that a friend pointed me to Shakesville and I read that. 

It was real easy to just like, describe yourself as an authority in those days. The thing about Shakesville is it was presented to me as part of general leftism, with a focus on feminism (actually, initially I was introduced to it because of fat politics, and for all my eventual loathing of Shakesville I still have to say that MM did some pretty good work with what she wrote about that), but like crucially as if if you focused on the interpersonal and unpicking the kyriarchy in your individual language and choices, you could totally fight the power. The other thing about Shakesville is that Ana Mardoll was a mod there.

I was never a community member or a devotee, just an on and off reader (I was not there for the All In fiasco, for eg). But Shakesville is an obvious and popular example of the broader thing anyway. That kind of talk was happening everywhere. And I leaned into it HARD! I had gotten into university when I was 22/23 or so and I was studying and learning COLLEGE THINGS about like, as I say, the kyriarchy. I relentlessly picked apart and policed my language and the language of others honestly and sincerely thinking that if I could just get it right, do it exactly right, it would have some kind of positive impact on the world. 

I’m a discourse analyst - someone who studies language and what it does in the world - so obviously I do believe that language and how we use it is VERY important to understanding power within culture, and I’m also not some Bro who thinks that feminism and antiracism and so on in our own homes are “distractions” from the real issues or anything. But the hyperliberal, relentless focus on every single word and interaction as the ONLY site of progressive politics in those spaces, both online and off? Yeah, I fucking hated it. I was miserable and scared all the time. I felt constantly surveilled. 

Great time for someone who already had PTSD (something else I didn’t know at the time) and was getting more of it (something else I ALSO didn’t know at the time). 

But the other thing is I also thought it was fucking STUPID, while simultaneously beating myself up for not being an enlightened enough person to understand that it was Smart Actually, that the best most clever most ethical people (I mean, they said they were) thought this, and what was wrong with me that I couldn’t get there. But I thought it was so stupid! And I couldn’t SAY stupid, that word is ableist. You can’t rip on Yale Legacy Daddy Was The President G.W. Bush for getting Cs and STILL GETTING TO BE THE PRESIDENT because it indicates that you are ableist towards people who do not get As.

(I think about that one all the time because in retrospect it’s such a TELL lol. Just bypassing the point that we’re talking about someone whose class position means he never has to excel to be handed the finest things to cut straight to a world where obviously everybody talks about what grades they got in school and what everybody else got and how they feel about it now, years later, as Very Smart Ladies Obviously on the internet.) These contexts were EMOTIONAL. People cried. You “hurt” them you “invalidated” them you “invisibilized” them you were selfishly focused on the “wrong things” because of your privilege (always theirs, never yours) blah blah blah blah blah. 

Look, my lunchbreak is up so I don’t have time to write anymore, so I’ll just quickly summarize where this story would have went had I had another 1/2 hour: that shit did a lot of damage to my brain and heart, it was bound up together with the damage my home life was doing, and I still struggle with what a complete fucking garbage heap I feel like for DAYS the moment someone deploys that wilting liberal shit on me. 

So basically I’ve been checking in with and mocking Ana’s content for years because it’s kind of like a sanity check. It was not me, it was those fucking people and their goddamned bad opinions. When Ana (like those others) said he was the smartest, goodest, most worthy source for how to Think Right and Be Ethical in the world, he was in fact lying (just like the TV news), because his analysis is neither precise nor useful, neither thoughtful nor kind. 

Popping on twitter to be like, oh ok Ana still thinks making jokes about beans in chili as a Texas thing is “othering bullshit” because some Texans don’t even like chili is kind of centering. Ana still thinks his fucking dog is trans. Ana is a goddamned idiot and the emperor has no clothes and works for Lockheed Martin and was never, ever actually invested in the things I believe in at all. 

[merci-bitch]

How about Rose the Hat

“My, aren’t you something?”

Ask and you shall receive. Haven’t written for Rose in quite a while, I’m reading the book now and she’s completely different than the movie. More manipulative, aggressive, possessive, confident. Quite fun. not sure this is what you wanted 🤠, I got carried away eh.

Warning (s): swearing, blood, knife throwing, manipulation, humiliation, sadness :(

“Oh, did I wake you sleepyhead?”

You’d woken by the sound of a door slamming shut. An unfamiliar smell surrounded you and the the climate you were in where anything but your bedroom.

You turned your head and saw a woman brewing tea. Standing by the kettle. You had never seen her before. You tried not to stare as she stood by the table, but you couldn’t help it. She was mysteriously extraordinary. The woman was tall, her hair was long, brown and filled with a bunch of different things, a slim but not too thin body, high cheekbones, slightly tripped eyes but extremely sexy. There was something unhealthy about the way she looked. She didn’t look a day over 30. She turned around and you saw her full. She was the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen.

“It’s been a while since someone’s been so starstruck to see me.”

The woman chuckled as she sipped her tea, walking over to the bed and sitting down in front of you.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Rose. Rose the Hat as my very good friends would say.”

You kept looking at her. Noticing small freckles across her face.

“Where am I?”

Rose took another sip of her tea. Time going slow as she took her time answering your question. Then, she looked you straight in the eyes, making your blood run cold. There was something in those eyes. Danger, curiosity, lust and something more. Your father would call it the “psychopath stare”.

“Long away from home, dear one. Perhaps Mississippi.”

Kidnapped. You’d been kidnapped by some oddly sexy psychopath.

“I wouldn’t say kidnapped. You are not a kid Y/N.”

“How do you know my name? How-why am I here?! You crazy psychopath!”

“Those acting classes didn’t really pay off, I see.”

“Oh, bloody hell.”

“Ah, a Brit in America?”

“I live in England. Thank you very much.”

“How come such a pretty face is here in the states?”

“None of your business woman.”

“I want the truth. We only speak the truth from now on.”

“I was here to visit a friend.”

“There we go. Now, you’re a big steam head, so be nice and I won’t kill you.”

You scoffed, getting off the bed. Walking further out in the earth-cruiser.

“Oh, right. Cause that’s bloody comforting.”

“Do as you’re told and it’ll be. Now, come sit.”

Rose said as she patted the spot you sat in seconds ago. An expression of serious planted on her face. Her smile gone, eyes dark and the muscles in her face tightened. You slowly sat down. A little further away from her, pulling your knees up to your chest. Wrapping your arms around your legs.

“No fear. We eat fear.”

What was this place and who were these people? Cannibals?

“Not quite.”

Mind readers. Great.

Rose chuckled. “My, aren’t you something?”

You didn’t answer. You just moved further away from her, until you were pressed up against the window. Rose grabbed your hand, gently pulling you back towards her. Gently and gently was debatable.

“Children love you, correct?”

“What? Yes-I mean it depends on the circumstances. Why?”

“I’m gonna offer you a deal. A deal I haven’t offered anyone in almost 40 years.”

“You’re older than 40?”

“Yes dear. Much older.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s the point Y/N. Eat well, stay young, live long.”

“Wait, you got a little hint of an accent.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do! You aren’t American either.”

“Then where am I from?”

“Hm. You got quite the accent once it’s really showing. I’d say European, but English. Ireland.”

Rose didn’t answer. Her rube life was behind her. Far behind her. That pathetic life was gone and she wasn’t Rose O’Hara anymore. She was stronger, better and more sure of why she wanted.

“Irish Rose eh?”

If Rose hadn’t the need of you, she would have snapped your neck. Eaten you. Turned your insides out. Let you hang from a tree like a pig for slaughter.

Her hand was wrapped around your throat, pushing you against the window. Nails digging into the skin of your throat. She was unbelievable strong.

“Listen here you little shit. You do what I say and we’ll all come out happy and satisfied, alright?”

You nodded your head, tears stinging behind your eyes. That psychopath smile returned to Rose’s lips. “Good girl.”

-

You were sitting on a park bench. Holding a stuffed animal. A bunny to be specific. Fumbling with it in your hands. It reminded you of one you had as a kid. The light brown fur, the pretty pink dress. A build-a-bear.

It had been months. A few dreadful months. Filled with horror and death and things you didn’t wanna confirm you’d done. You did something horrible to keep yourself alive. What a selfish thing to do.

The True Knot, as they called themselves. You were a part of them now. Having been turned. Your old life gone. Y/N L/N wasn’t your name anymore. Kiddy Y/N was. Something Barry had come up with. Something Rose found awfully amusing. Your job was to lead the children to their deaths. They liked you, every child you’d meet liked you. You never understood why, always thought it was part of your charm.

Here you were. Sitting on a park bench in April. With a stuffed bunny in your hand. Waiting for the little girl named Amy to come. From the information you’d gotten from Crow, she was steamy alright. Perhaps she could fill 2-3 canisters. They were hungry. You were too but you would never admit it. Eating children’s fear still not sitting right with you.

“Are you alright?”

You looked up and saw a woman. A tall, blond haired woman. Perhaps a little shorter than Rose.

“Yeah, I’m quite alright miss.”

She sat down next to you, a look of worry on her face. Her fingers touched your cheek.

“You’re awfully pale and a little cold. Have you eaten?”

Talk about coincidence.

“No, not really. It’s alright.”

“Of course it isn’t!”

Ah, a fellow Brit.

“Really. Miss, you shouldn’t worry.”

The woman let out a sigh. Eyes dropping to the stuffed bunny in your hands.

“You have a child here?”

“Oh, not really.”

The woman looked oddly at you.

“Hope you’re not here to steal one then.”

The woman laughed. She had a wonderful laugh, a pretty smile. Bright blue eyes.

“Wouldn’t that be a story to tell.”

You could feel eyes on you. Not just the kind lady’s eyes. Rose’s eyes. She probably wasn’t happy. Telling you to get on with it. You’d probably get a handful when you got back.

“Are you sure you’re alright? You look so lost.”

You chuckled. “Aren’t we all a little lost?”

She smiled softly at you, grabbing one of your hands. Giving it a soft squeeze.

“You got a kid here?”

“Oh, yes. That little girl over the swings. The pink dress.”

The woman leaned in and pointed over towards the swings.

Fuck.

Amy.

“She’s such an angel. So bright.”

“I’m sure she is.”

The woman then held out her hand. “I’m Hannah.”

“Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you Y/N.”

“Likewise.”

Hannah smiled at you. Smiling even wider as the little girl that was her daughter came running towards you.

“There’s my baby!” Hannah said as she picked up the girl and put her on her lap.

“Be a good girl and say hello to Y/N.”

“Hi.”

“Hello there. Nice to meet you.”

Amy smiled and hide her face in her mother’s chest. Hannah smiled at her daughter and kissed her head, giving her a tight squeeze.

“What’s your name little one?”

“Amy.”

“Well, Amy. How would you like a new friend?”

Amy’s eyes went wide and her smile even wider.

You held up the stuffed bunny and held it out to her. She grabbed it slowly.

“She’s yours now. Take good care of her for me?”

Amy nodded her head and held the stuffed bunny close to her.

“Pinky promise?”

Amy held out her pinky and locked it with yours. Your eyes locked with Hannah’s. A pure look of softness in her features. Something completely different from Rose.

Rose was like the wicked witch of the west with a twist of beauty. Just as wicked. Just as wanting, greedy and dangerous. Hannah was, well. Kind. Soft and everything but wicked. Someone you wished you’d meet a long time ago. She was older than you. Maybe early 40’s. A kind heart, a single mother who loved her little girl more then anything in the world. A heart that would hurt to break.

-

“She’s a fucking joke.”

“I told you! So ducking pathetic.”

“Both of you shut up.”

Rose had had enough. You were taking far to long. You had one job. Take the fucking child, not bond with it. You weren’t that useless. You brought them food when they weren’t able by leasing the children right into their little trap. If the kid was a big steam head, Rose would even reward you. She definitely wouldn’t now. Doesn’t matter how big of a steam head the girl might be.

Crow whistled at her, asking her to come over to where he was standing. Where he’d been watching you for the past hours. Rose stepped over and looked to where he was pointing. You little bitch.

-

“Oh, my. I do apologize. I don’t know where my head went.” Hannah said, looking away as a blush crept up her chest.

Amy was back over at the playground. You’d continued to talk to Hannah, she was sitting closer this time. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, she’d kissed you. It was a soft kiss. Different from Rose’s bruising kisses. Both addicting.

You knew you’d get a shit tone of hits when you went back, but right now? You wanted to enjoy a life you could have lived. Even if just for a few more seconds.

You grabbed Hannah’s hand, making her look at you. Her eyes searching for your answer. You slowly leaned in and gave her a kiss of your own. Both your eyes closing in unison. Her hand tightening in yours. A soft sound escaping her throat. Oh, how you wished you could just live a normal life. A life you wasn’t doomed to live.

You pulled away and started to get up. Hannah grabbed your hand and stood up with you. She leaned in, brushing the hair away from your ear, whispering in your ear.

“I saw you come here. How you looked at my daughter before. I’ve seen those people a few feet away. Don’t break my heart.”

The tone she used sent shivers down your spine.

Hannah grabbed your hand, pulling you with her.

“Hannah I-“

“You’re coming home with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Says who?”

“Hannah-“

“Whoever those people are, that are watching. Leave them be Y/N. They clearly aren’t good for you. Look at you. You look dreadful.”

“Thanks.”

Hannah’s expression softened. Pulling you into a hug.

“You deserve someone good for you. A real family. Not people who drag you down. Who doesn’t let you eat. For gods sake look at you! Thin as a stick.”

“Not true.”

“Almost then.”

“It’s a bit more difficult then that. I can’t just join you.”

“Why not? You didn’t hesitate to.”

You sighed. Looking down at the ground. What would happen if you didn’t “eat”? Would you die?

Eat well, stay young, live long.

Could you survive on just human food? Was it worth a try?

“If you want to get a new chance at life. With me. I’d be happy to offer one, if I could. Meet me tonight at the local coffee shop. If you decide not to show up, then that’s that. But if you do. We’ll move somewhere where they can’t find us. Somewhere where I can get to know you.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes dear?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Cause I find you oddly interesting and you’re very good with my girl. She likes you more than she’s liked anyone else of my former partners.”

Hannah’s fingers touched your cheek again and stroked it. She walked away without another word. Walking away while holding her girl’s hand.

-

“I want to kill you.”

“Then do it.”

“It’ll only give you a satisfaction of dying quicker than I intend you to.”

“Then what’s the point.”

“You’re such a little bitch.”

You were right about the handful. Rose had gone crazy. So crazy she’d thrown a knife at you, it hitting your shoulder.

“Who’s that blond bitch you were all over hm?”

“The mother of the child you wanted me to steal.”

“Oh, cheer up grinch. It’s only Christmas once a year.”

You’d pulled out the knife, trying not to cry at the pain. You’d cleaned the wound, only to get another wipe from the knife on your arm.

“Stop throwing the bloody knife!”

“Or what? You’d cry? Cry out for that blond lady? ‘Oh please, blond lady come help me!’ Tell me. What’s her name?”

You didn’t answer her.

“What’s her name Y/N?”

She was pushing you and she knew that you knew that she’d get the answer out of you no matter what you did.

“I’m not telling you.”

“Why? So you can run of with her and that pathetic little child? Play happy family with a stranger you just meet?” Rose laughed in your face and threw the knife again. This time she missed you. You knew she did it on purpose.

“You’re so pathetic it’s hilarious.”

“You kept me.”

“Because we could use you.”

“You cared for me.”

Rose didn’t answer.

“I don’t care what what you’re gonna say next. This was a mistake and if I cou-“

“Well you can’t. Seems like you’re stuck here with me forever. Now be a good girl, go meet that lady and get her fucking child.”

-

You went. A heavy feeling in your chest. You didn’t want to do this. Why had Hannah been so enchanting? She was a stranger you just meet. Someone you didn’t know anything about? She was just the mother to the kid you were supposed to steal.

When Hannah saw you, her eyes lit up. She got up from her chair and wrapped her arms around you. Holding you tight against her.

“Don’t take my child.”